


Safe Haven

by speakmefair



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Badly arranged polygamy, Edwardian AU, Multi, mention of childnessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:53:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard contemplates what he needs, what he must do, and why he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Haven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/gifts).



Richard closes his eyes when Robert touches him for many reasons, oh so many reasons, and first among them because it is only with Robert that he can truly _feel_ , and the darkness of his shut eyelids enables that, facilitates that, brings it to life -- but mostly, if he's honest, it is because he's worried about turning into a babbling fool if he looks at him. Not really, he tells himself, not as though he really would, not as though he really _could_ , but more because sometimes it feels like something buried deep within him will come bubbling out and he won't be able to control it.

 _Once upon a time, and long ago, Robbie met him in a dim orchard with a book of Rilke in his hand, and Richard's heart leapt for the knowing of him._

**

When Richard goes to Anne's bed, he is frightened, unsure, for what does he know of virginity save his own?

It seems that they know each other, and that suffices, all through the awkwardness and the pain and Anne's tears of embarrassment.

 _I give you Queen Anne!_

**

If he closes his eyes, he feels every swirl and whorl on Robert's fingertips; he feels every tiny bud and crease on Robert's tongue as it traces a path across his skin; the touch is dark and wet and it is all of secrets brought to life, and there are crinkles that only he knows of in each crease.

 _Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other._

**

He opens them, and sees Anne; her dark eyes, her sweet smile, and knows the desire that comes from a need to possess. He thinks no less of himself for it, for the same look is in her gaze when she opens her eyes and cries out, surprised, when they both find joy in the act.

 _We will have many children,_ Richard promises her. But the children are all those that Anne chooses to love, who are nothing to do with either of them, and are never (because it never becomes fact) those born of their love or their bodies.

 _O Child of Man!_

**

When Richard touches Robert, he closes his eyes and lets his fingers and palms skate over all the textures that make up his body: soft and smooth, hairy and coarse, hot and pulsing, and all of it, now, his for the taking (for the asking, if a King ever should lower himself to do so), and ultimately, beautifully, sometimes too beautifully given.

Anne gives herself up to him as a cornucopia of love, to be taken, enjoyed, relished, and so he does, while his eyes look into hers and they laugh away what this act should perpetrate.

What it should beget.

 _They succeed in loving the distance between them._

**

Richard closes his eyes while he runs his hands over Robert and gives them both joy, and thinks about counting every single tiny line and infinitesimal crease of skin on Robert's body as it ripples under his tongue, his fingers, his nails, his eyes; thinks how it would feel if he had the time to make such a thing last; thinks about how it might be if they both had the time, ever, that he might be touching each of these places instead of all of them in some hastily greedy desired clutch; that he could take them with delicacy, with deep breaths between each touch; that if the time were given, ah! He would take them all one-by-one, slow and careful, using his fingers and his tongue and his teeth and sometimes his words, which could be a brush of silk along the life-marred skin.

 _Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain?_

**

Anne kisses Richard's lips sometimes as though she were a sipping bee, surfeiting on nectar, and each time he loves her more for that fluttering touch of skin. He rises to her, inhabits her, possesses and is surrounded by her, and thinks – ah, this, this, and only this, this is love.

**

Robert laughs at him, in a garden, under the boughs, under the eaves of a hastily-erected loggia that the young King requires. Even on the day that Richard sees him weep, he laughs.

**

Anne's small hands cup his member, while even her hands grow red with embarrassment, and naked in his arms while he lies in more than one way naked in her hands, she laughs and asks "Always? Like this?"

"Not always," Richard promises her, and kisses her white rounded shoulders, the curves of her neck, the softness of her young chin. "With you."

**

Robert touches him with his strong hands, grazing his swirled and whorled fingertips along the length of Richard's erection, circling the head, wet with pre-come. Richard sees the strange black stars of light behind his eyelids swarm and swirl in the same patterns. He mutters something and runs his teeth against Robert's neck; he knows this is the right thing to do when Robert gasps and arches his body until he is pressing where Richard wants him, against his tight opening.

"God," Robert says. Richard, with his eyes closed, hears every vibration and rumble in Robert's voice and he holds his breath as he bears down to let Robert in with one long stroke.

Only then does he open his eyes and exhale.

He thinks _Anne_ , and can dare to hope, thinks _Robert_ and wishes he could be honest, thinks _love, love, love, I love you both_ , and almost cries it aloud.

**

Anne holds his heart safe, and brings him home, while he grasps at her shores and knows what a haven is.

**

Robbie, the swift ship of desire and parting, loses and looses them both from themselves for no more than a moment of fidelity that was no such thing, for in losing he has lost all, and in losing him Richard has lost half himself.

**

Anne welcomes Richard to their bed no matter what she feels has transpired, and though Richard wishes she could not – for how can he love and cleave to one more than the other? – she consoles him, she makes life durable, she heals him and makes it possible for him to continue in his outward life –

\--even while he sometimes weeps when there is only five minutes of solitude in which so to do.

Anne wants his love and he gives it to her freely, and Robbie has taken half (the better half, perhaps) of it with him to Ireland, and Richard, torn in two, knows only that he loves, and loves, and cannot separate the loving.

And in that moment of knowing, more than ever, he always thinks and feels and knows –

**

He reaches into the coffin, and takes Robert's dead, cool, dry-embalmed arm in his hands; presses his mouth to the withered hand; maps the still veins with his mouth, licking and biting from Robert's wrist up to the crook of his elbow, around to what was once hard muscle, tense and cool underneath his skin. He can feel his heart beating, too hard, too fast, and imagines it deep within Robert’s chest, beneath skin and borrowed blood and muscle and bone, bringing him to life.

**

 _I am the King_.

 **Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.**


End file.
